لعمرك ما ضاقت بلاد بأهلها … ولكن أحلام الرجال تضيق

Tag Archives: Islam

Over the last few days, I have been hearing from my Malaysian friends and friends of friends quiet a number of wrong facts about what is happening in Egypt. Such as:

Morsi being ousted is a War on Islam.

Morsi has been very supportive for the main issue that interest the Islamic world such as Palestine and Syria.

Morsi has been very democratic with Egyptians.

Poor Egyptians they do not understand democracy.

Egyptians are influenced by the Americans and Israelis.

The protests in Egypt were supported by the Syiah in Iran.

Etc…

I understand that if someone is not following the situation since the beginning or he did not read thoroughly about the history of the Muslims Brotherhood to understand their actions or did not read on the modern history of Egypt (At least) and suddenly wake up on the news that the elected president was ousted. It would be easy to feel bad about it and to believe whatever so called facts mentioned earlier.

So I want to address some of the wrong facts here and I will make sure that I quote real incidents to prove my point and whenever resources are available I will refer to them.

Before going into addressing those claimed facts, it is important to point out something. Egyptians (I mean majority of them) have been used to the Islamic movements such as the Muslims Brotherhood (MB), the Salfists and other Islamic movements sending messages in the meaning (Claiming) that they represent Islam. We (Egyptians) are used to them saying; we are defending Islam, when we apply our agenda the country will flourish because that is what God wants. If you are against us then you are against Islam. If you do not vote for them, then the question will be; Why? Don’t you want the law (Shariaa) of God to be applied? Don’t you love Islam? Etc..

To be honest also, those messages are not always sent in such direct meaning. Sometimes they are sent directly, sometimes indirectly. But the thing is, those are the kind of messages being sent.

As we are in Egypt used to that. The Egyptians response to that will be usually; “Whatever!”. Egypt is the country where Al-Azhar is. Al-Azhar has been the most trusted resource of Islamic Teachings in the world. Thousands of Malaysian and Muslims from across the globe are studying there each year. That’s the real culture of the Egyptians who understand the Islamic teaching from the resources and are teaching them to the whole world. I just wanted to clarify this because when I am writing this blog, I am not against Islam. I do my prayers every day, I love being Muslim and I am proud of it. I actually think that people like Morsi are destroying the good image of Islam. [How? That will be the topic of another article]

Now going to the claimed facts.

1. Morsi has been elected democratically and Egyptians are turning their back to democracy.

Theoretically, yes Morsi was elected democratically but if you understand democracy as a ballot box and that’s it! After that you should stay silent till the next elections. That will be a different type of democracy than the original meaning of it.

Democracy is representing people through representatives from them. Democracy is listening to people needs, responding to them, being transparent to them. Democracy means that the people are the source of Authority. So as an Elected leader if you failed them, lied about all your promises to the people before elections, spread a speech of hatred against them even made a public prayers (Dua) against your people asking God to destroy them or approved sending messages asking Egyptians to fight each other then you are simply losing the authority that was given to you by the people.

That was what Morsi did. (Refer to Why Egyptians are revolting after 1 year of Elections?). In respond to that, the people asked him to call for a public referendum on an early Elections and if the Egyptians disapproved it, then he can continue his term. Morsi ignored that totally so the people had no other way but to march in millions peacefully asking him to step down and call for an early elections where he is still allowed to run again for it.

So in short, Egyptians are not turning their back to democracy. That is the core of the political process. To watch over your leaders and if they are off track, you push for them to go back. If they continue on ignoring then you return the authority to the people to elect new leaders.

In such way, new Leaders will understand that they cannot lie to the people or the people will force them down. That is the way to build a country where the leaders truly belong to the people. It can be a long way but we must build it right.

2. What happened in Egypt is a military coup. Egypt is turning into a military rule.

3. What happened against Morsi is a War on Islam. America and Israel are behind that.

The easiest way to think about something is to think of conspiracy theories. I would call that, the lazy mindset. Which is to recall a huge danger to avoid thinking of the real problems.

90% or more of the Egyptians are Muslims. Over the past 14 century, Egypt has been the last block standing against any threats over Islam. The idea of Egypt to have a role in the prosperity of Muslim countries or the world in general is something embedded in the Egyptian culture and you cannot understand that unless you understand the long history of Egypt over thousands of years. That would need some kind of cultural anthropology to explain.

However, People in Egypt revolted against Morsi because they are now speaking the language of food, electricity petrol and water supplies. The language of freedom and sharing the authority of Egypt’s future. The language of saving the Egyptian blood that is being shed every while. The language of unity that Morsi has been breaking all the time. The language of ignoring the people needs that are simple and reliable. The language of Morsi thinking of his party interests before the country’s. The language of security in the streets and the language of a country that protects the law.

You may say, it is America and Israel that are blocking the future of Egypt so Morsi will look weak in the eyes of his people. Again it is easy to think the lazy way instead of looking at the real problems. Morsi ignored all the advice that came from other political parties and people leaders. Most of the people who worked with him and are not from his party resigned saying that he doesn’t listen to them at all and he announce decisions without even consulting them at all. Though Morsi’s promise to the people before elections was to work together with those people and share with them the burden of building Egypt’s future. That was one of the real reasons he won the elections. But he simply lied about that and drove the country to the Fall economically.

4. Morsi was taking a strong stand in important issues that concerns the Islamic world such as Palestine and Syria.

For the case of Palestine refer to the article published in Haaretz. The link is in the previous paragraph.

Regarding Syria, Morsi in his visit to Russia clearly stated that His stand from Syria is no different from Russia’s stand. Watch to this part of his speech here. Knowing that Russia is clearly supporting Al-Assad Regime in Syria you can understand how Morsi was actually supportive to the Syrian people. Morsi only decided to withdraw the diplomatic relations with Syria when U.S decided to support the Syrian opposition militarily. In short words, Morsi was kissing asses for Russia but when Putin turned him down, he decided to kiss ass for U.S. If you are living in the middle east and you understand the complications of the political situation in the region, you will know that withdrawing the diplomatic relations with Syria is such a stupid move.

5. The protests in Egypt are support by the Siyah in Iran.

First of all, I want to clarify that I carry all respect to the Siyah and my different religious background should Not influence my respect to them or any human being or even our cooperation on the understanding or respect to each other.

Talking politics, Morsi himself took such closer steps to Iran than Mubarak ever did. The diplomatic relations between Egypt and Iran has been in trouble for long years especially after Al-Sadat the previous president of Egypt (60’s-80’s) hosted the Shah of Iran after the Islamic revolution in Iran. Al-Sadat rejected to hand over the Shah to Iran and hosted him in Egypt. When Al-Sadat was murdered, Iran celebrated that. They built a huge statues for the murderer and put it in a main public square named after him in Tehran. Since then, the diplomatic relations are not going very well between Egypt and Tehran plus other reasons concerning the security of the gulf and other staff. There is no Egyptian Embassy in Tehran or vice-versa. Mubarak never visited Tehran nor the Iranian President did to Cairo.

So what did Morsi do when he became the president? He did visit Tehran and Ahmedi Nejad did visit Cairo. All unresolved issues seemed to be forgotten and not even discussed. Even the Egyptian regime decided to facilitate the Iranian tourism to Egypt.

Then here comes the double standards. Demonstrations against Morsi were set to start on June 30 months ago if Morsi did not show any respond to the public demands. Few weeks before June 30, it was clear that millions of Egyptians were to march against him on June 30. At that time Morsi relations with Iran were improving pretty well. There would be no justification for Iran to support the protests. Iran never dreamed of such improvement in the diplomatic relations between the 2 countries. Even Egyptians in general feel sensitive to relations with Iran due to the previous mentioned incidents. It does not make any sense that the Egyptian youth would accept any support from Iran since they are actually seeing Morsi going in the wrong direction in his moves with Iran. The claim is simply invalid.

Morsi was loosing people’s support day after day. So what did he decide to do? Few weeks before June 30 (The announced date for demonstrations) instead of responding to the public demands, he continued on ignoring and decided to go with the Egyptian extremists who were mad at him before because of what he did earlier with Iran seeking their support. He attended their public conferences where they curse the Iranians and the Siyah in public. Almost indirectly calling the ignorant public to murder any Siyahs that they see because they are a danger on Islam as they claimed. Morsi stayed silent whenever such speech is spoken in front of him and did not act as a political leader who have a minority of Egyptians who are Siyah and he is responsible to preserve their dignity and public respect. Or as a leader of a country like Egypt, you cannot just approve cursing other nation’s people. For example you may not like the American policy, but it is not logical or proper to keep cursing the American people for that just because they are citizens of a country that you do not like their leaders or you are both having different religious backgrounds. Morsi did not act as a true Leader of Egypt he just wanted to get some Extremists support even in that cheap way.

What we were afraid of happened, few days after Morsi has been doing this. For some ignorant public that was like a sign that the country is against the Siyah even they are Egyptians. 4 Egyptians Siyahs were beaten to death in the streets few days later. Those were Egyptians. Those were citizens who should have equal rights as anyone else.

Morsi was just totally immature in his actions. Till now Morsi did few public speeches were some of them lasted for hours but he did not even mention something about those 4 Egyptians who were brutally killed. In my eyes, this is not a president. He is not even suitable to be a school teacher where he is teaching young generations principles in life.

That was just another reason for Egyptians to remove such irresponsible President.

Those were 5 main claimed facts that I saw spreading. I hope that this blog would open our minds to read more and not just build assumptions based on one resource or from what you read anywhere.

If you find that there are other claims not addressed here. Please comment on this post so that I will address them or send me a private message if you feel more comfortable that way.